Unused Dreams: Joey's Surprising Return In 'A New Beginning'

The dream sequence ending was a staple of the earlier portion of the Friday the 13th franchise. The first five films contained these sort of endings (The Final Chapter's was excised before theatrical release) and were designed to create that one last jump scare for the audience. Could Friday the 13th: A New Beginning have had another?

The aforementioned original five films in the series are notorious for their dream sequence endings. The original film in 1980 had one of the most effective sequences ever in the genre where a young Jason Voorhees emerges from the water to pull survivor Alice Hardy underneath the water. Friday the 13th Part 2 tried to duplicate the success of the original dream sequence with Jason jumping through the window to grab Ginny. Part 3 tried the dream yet again with Jason’s mom, complete with reattached head, jumping out of the lake to grab Chris from her boat on the lake. The unused ending of The Final Chapter was also a dream sequence where Jason follows Trish upstairs to attack her as she finds the corpse of her mother.

There is another dream sequence that was rumored for filming for Friday The 13th:A New Beginning and it would have been quite interesting if it ever materialized. The dream sequence would have had Tommy, Pam and Reggie in a canoe on a lake. A reassembled Joey would then jump out of the lake and pull the three survivors underneath the water. The scene was never filmed, but it would have fit with the dream sequences trending from the first four films.

At first thought, this may not seem logical at all, however, young Jason pulled Alice out of her boat in a dream after killing Mrs. Voorhees, so the thought of Joey emerging in a dream after his father was killed would fit as an homage to the original film. Also, in Part 3, Mrs. Voorhees emerged from the lake with her head reattached, so Joey appearing with his arm in place would make sense within the dreams constructed in earlier Friday The 13th films.

Would you have liked to see Joey jump from the lake in A New Beginning, or was the final scene we saw on film a better way to end the movie?